Piggyback Airplanes
Ten of aviation's most famous hitch-hikers.
- By Lynn Keillor
- Air & Space magazine, July 2012
San Diego Aerospace Museum
Hitchhiker: F9C Sparrowhawk
Mothership: USS Akron and Macon airships
United States, 1930
The sharp-looking Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk fighter wasn’t the first choice as a parasite for experiments on the U.S. Navy’s new helium airship, the USS Akron, but its 25.5-foot wingspan made it the only aircraft that could fit though the dirigible’s hangar door.
Modified Sparrowhawk F9C-2 models started testing with the Akron in June 1932 to prove the airship’s use as a flying aircraft carrier. When the tiny Sparrowhawk flew alongside the 785-foot Akron, it looked like a minnow swimming next to a whale.
The fighter parasites launched from the dirigible’s hangar in mid-air, then re-attached by speeding up alongside the airship and catching a trapeze-type bar dropped from its belly. Once attached, a hook would engage and the pilot would wait to be pulled up. In some tests, the Sparrowhawk’s landing gear was removed and replaced with an extra fuel tank to extend its reach.
The tests came to a halt after disaster struck the motherships: The Akron was lost in a storm in 1933, and two years later, its counterpart, the Macon, crashed off California. Five Sparrowhawks went down with the ships, and the remaining orphans were put into utility operations. The accidents also marked the end of the Navy’s rigid-airship program.
The last dry Sparrowhawk—a few remain intact inside the sunken Macon—is on display at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia.
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Comments (8)
In 1957 I was the co-pilot on a SA-16A (Grumman Albatross)
Air Rescue Service amphib for a trans-Atlantic crossing, with a stop half-way across in the Azores. We were ferrying the aircraft from Wheelus AFB, Tripoli,back to the Grumman factory where the A/C would be overhauled and upgraded to a B model. If my memory is correct, the leg from the Azores to Argentia, NewFoundland took about 14 hours. That airplane could carry a lot of gas! That was the longest flight I can recall, with the possible exception of a LHR-LAX or a JFK-TelAviv nonstop when I was a TWA 747 Captain.
Posted by William Polk on May 23,2012 | 04:21 PM
I've read in some sources about an alleged fifth operational D-21 flight? Is there any truth to this? If so, what happened to it?
Posted by Gray Stanback on May 23,2012 | 06:41 PM
In the late 1950's I was in SAC 92nd bomb wing. On our base we had a reconnaissance squadron flying B-36R's. The B-36 was towed over a pit in the pit was an F-84R. The F-84 was attached to the bomber and raised up partially into the special bomb-bay. The F-84 was launched and retrieved in flight on the trapeze. The F-84 could be refueled and the film canisters changed in flight. There was even a film processing lab in the rear of the B-36.
We later had U-2's and the need for the tandem B-36 and F-84 was no longer needed.
Posted by JIm Fling on May 24,2012 | 05:14 PM
A specialized aircraft was designed and built to be uniquely carried by the B-36 internally, supposedly for defensive purposes. My recollection was it was built by McDonnell and designated XF-85.
Posted by Kendall Russell Maj Gen USAF (ret) on May 25,2012 | 04:44 PM
In the summer of 1953 following my Midshipman Cruise to Rio, I worked as Assistant PR Director of the first Dayton Air Show. When the Show began, I squired around Howard Sochurek and Marshal Lumsden of Life Magazine. I was able to get the three of us on board a modified B-36 that had its own fighter escort (F-84) join up at 10,000 feet, hook it to its boom and pull the fighter into the bomb bay. Howard and I took many pictures of the event from both the bomb bay and the blisters in the aft fuselage. The Air Force insisted on processing the film and the pictures never appeared in Life as the Air Force claimed that they showed too much secret equipment.
Posted by John B. Neff on May 26,2012 | 11:50 PM
There was also the German Mistel piggyback project that saw limited operatons late in WWII.
In a sense, the X-1, X-2, X-15 and some other experimental aircraft followed the piggyback concept. Only the X-1 was capable of taking off from the ground (and it did it only once) so they needed to be carried to altitude by a bomber.
Posted by Larry J on May 31,2012 | 01:20 PM
I was born in Dundee, and remember my Dad telling me how he had seen Mercury and Maia on the Tay. He could only have been 11 at the time, but was still excited at the memory. I was delighted to find a compilation of Newsreels on You Tube showing the aircraft, including them taking off from Dundee for the flight to South Africa - wonder where Dad was watching them from, and if he's in the background somewhere.
Link to the newsreels:
http://youtu.be/bYtazEBQ1K8
Posted by Mike Brand on June 17,2012 | 07:49 PM
Well, I'm not sure if this could be a piggyback "airplane", but the shuttle Enterprise was piggybacked to a 747 and a least one time separated in flight to test the feasibility of the landing procedure of the space shuttle.
Posted by Fernando on January 23,2013 | 04:35 AM